Running and Playing Dark Fantasy Campaigns

[Frozen_Feet]

I'm actually leaning strongly towards not explaining at all.

There's a difference between no explanation, partial explanations and full disclosure. I'm not advocating for the third, I'm advocating for the second: that if player characters really look into it, they will unearth nuggets of information that cast daily interactions in an eerie light.

That the God Kings are not truly divine, and that magic can be used by anyonr, and that they used to be mortal, are already examples of this... or would be, if the concept wasn't a cliche. (By which I mean, to player characters this revelation might be shocking, but to players themselves it's gonna be Tuesday, because this trope is so prevalent in fantasy.)

God kings are not meant to be fought...

That doesn't really enter into what I said. The hidden information the PCs find doesn't need to hint at the God Kings being defeatable. On the contrary, it can be the opposite, hinting at additional reasons why they are undefeatable, or why defeating them would be a really bad idea.

...and their power can not be attained by PCs.

Sure, but why?

There's a world of difference between PCs being unable to attain the power because they have no clue how to, and PCs being unable to attain power because they know attaining it is impossible for whatever reason.

Spoiler: An example from Shineki no Kyojin

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Kenny Ackerman was planning to backstab the Royal Family of Paradise Island, to gain power of the Original Titan. But at the last moment, he learned that this power can only be used by those of the Royal Bloodline.

Also remember, I'm suggesting that each God King has a different reason of being where they are. Nothing is quite as delicious as false hope created by partial information. Knowing for sure that they can't gain powers of one God King, but also knowing this reason can't apply to others, can keep the characters futily searching for power for extended periods, and potentially committing heinous crimes, all for nothing.

(Really, just the revelation that each God King is different type of being, even in absence of knowledge of what those types are, could be a game-changer. Let's start with the assumption that great many underground cults are searching for the way to become a God King. But the reason they're failing is because "God King" is not a singular thing, it's an artificial category lumping together vastly different things. There is no such thing as a God King and hence the entire concept of the way is flawed.)

[Aran nu tasar]

I'm leaning towards something Powered by the Apocalpyse myself. (Though not Dungeon World, which is too much of a D&D emulation to me.) Apocalypse World would require some tweaking of the classes, but I'm not sure if there's any fitting fantasy variant already.

There are a bunch of dark fantasy hacks of AW, although as far as I know none of them are finished. There's Fallen Empires, which is a reskin of AW made by Vincent Baker. There's Apocalypse World: Dark Ages, which I can't track down a copy of right now, but was a playtest document for a medieval hack by Vincent. There's Eye of Chaos, made by John Harper. There's A Storm Eternal, also John Harper (along with Paul Riddle (Undying), Sage LaTorra (Dungeon World)), which is a hack of AW:Dark Ages.

Pretty much none of those links are going to be self-explanatory, so if you don't already know how Apocalypse World works then they will be downright useless, and even if you do it's going to take a decent amount of working out how everything fits together. Except Fallen Empires, because it's a pretty straightforward reskin.

Also it might be worth keeping an eye out for Band of Blades when it comes out - it's a dark military fantasy hack for Blades in the Dark, Black Company style. Nothing publicly available though; I know it is in the early stages of playtesting but I don't have any more info than that.

[Yora]

I downloaded Fallen Empires. I need to go through this in detail later.

Also remember, I'm suggesting that each God King has a different reason of being where they are. Nothing is quite as delicious as false hope created by partial information. Knowing for sure that they can't gain powers of one God King, but also knowing this reason can't apply to others, can keep the characters futily searching for power for extended periods, and potentially committing heinous crimes, all for nothing.

I see. I think we're merely having somewhat different ideas of which directions this could be taken. In something more high-magic, like Elric, I can see god kings taking a quite prominent role, even if unseen in the background, and players aiming very high in their pursuit of magical power. Also a really cool campaign concept.

I'm leaning more to something more low-magic with the god kings being mostly flavor. Maybe partly out of tradition, as I've always been focusing on very low-power fantasy so far. But there also is a really nice appeal of having global and cosmic machinations playing into a story. I'm still very much undeciced about that. I think this will emerge over time as I refine what themes and archetypes I want to work into the setting the most.

[RazorChain]

I downloaded Fallen Empires. I need to go through this in detail later.



I see. I think we're merely having somewhat different ideas of which directions this could be taken. In something more high-magic, like Elric, I can see god kings taking a quite prominent role, even if unseen in the background, and players aiming very high in their pursuit of magical power. Also a really cool campaign concept.

I'm leaning more to something more low-magic with the god kings being mostly flavor. Maybe partly out of tradition, as I've always been focusing on very low-power fantasy so far. But there also is a really nice appeal of having global and cosmic machinations playing into a story. I'm still very much undeciced about that. I think this will emerge over time as I refine what themes and archetypes I want to work into the setting the most.

I agree, in various Dark Fantasy campaigns, and Dark Fantasy is my forte, I have used a Demon King, An Vampire King, Dread Lords and etc. The point of the game isn't for the PC's to get powerful enough to punch them in the eye and steal their power because then we're back to D&D powerfantasy.

These beings exist in the background and the PC's might tangle with their agents.

[Yora]

Administrator-priests are something that I can totally get behind. Both as antagonists and as mysterious ladies who show up with two huge silent tempalars and a simple job to offer.

Spoiler: Dragon Age II

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Or both.

Actually, I do quite like much of the quest design in DA2, even though the world doesn't do much for me.

[Frozen_Feet]

I see. I think we're merely having somewhat different ideas of which directions this could be taken. In something more high-magic, like Elric, I can see god kings taking a quite prominent role, even if unseen in the background, and players aiming very high in their pursuit of magical power. Also a really cool campaign concept.

I'm leaning more to something more low-magic with the god kings being mostly flavor. Maybe partly out of tradition, as I've always been focusing on very low-power fantasy so far. But there also is a really nice appeal of having global and cosmic machinations playing into a story. I'm still very much undeciced about that. I think this will emerge over time as I refine what themes and archetypes I want to work into the setting the most.

In my experience, if there's a big figure of authority (God King, Emperor, whatever), the probability of a player-character-combination becoming self-righteous, greedy or ambitious enough to take that authority on steadily approaches 1 the more games you play in your setting. So even you don't plan to have the God Kings be at the fore front of your campaign, it pays to think about it, as it makes it easier to answer why the status quo of your setting exists.

For example, even if the player characters themselves are not interested in usurping the God Kings, they might run afoul of a cult, conspiracy or a bunch of barbarians trying to do that. As the number of such factions grows, the question increasingly becomes: why are none of them succeeding? And while this may lead to revealing something of the God Kings, it may just as well reveal something about those factions. The barbarians standing in opposition to the God Kings especially could have a fair few skeletons in their closet. For example, what was the role of those barbarians in the destruction of those ruined cities which lay underneath contemporary ones?

[Yora]

I'm still in the process of trying to find my stylistic center with this, and this threat really helps a lot.

I think, when I really boil it down to the very essentials of what inspires me, it's dark forests, rotting swamps, and misty lakes, with shadowy horned figures stalking through the fog. Narrow alleys at night are also nice.

That doesn't really mesh that well with "great kingdoms" based on "the eastern mediterranean sea". But the idea of powerful immortal leaders is still a great one. I think these two elements can be combined by going more with something like Galadriel and the Witch King of Angmar, Flemeth from Dragon Age, the Darklords from Ravenloft, or Ra in Stargate. I think city states (as in Dark Sun) might work better. Making them the children or messengers of actual gods would still give them as much political and religious power and a loyal caste of priests. At this lower power level, I feel more comfortable with the players actually encountering them and perhaps getting drawn into their plots.

For a more sneaky and less fighty campaign, intrigue and treachery are a great source of conflict and adventure. And plotting relies heavily on factions. Factions with conflicting goals and a ruthlessness to mercilessly exploit others for their goal. Specifically PCs. To combine those with forests and swamps, good goals would be to get assistance or even control over dark spirits that live in the wilderness, or to steal their power and that of dead (or soon to be dead) sorcerers who have been in hiding from the priest lords who didn't appreciate them getting too powerful.

[Thinker]

My favorite type of game to run is of the monster hunter variety. This tends to include a lot of common tropes with dark fantasy. In my estimation, you need mechanics that support eight things:

1. A feeling of suspense - Dread does this with a Jenga tower, but there are other ways to approximate the sense of suspense. You can use a deck of cards. Leave only the face cards and the jokers and make it so that drawing a joker leads to a bad situation for at least one of the players. Anytime the players take a long time completing a task (searching a room, interviewing a witness, haggling for a spot on a ship, etc.), the player who performed the action must draw a card. If multiple players are involved, they must all draw the card. The situation can be as dire as a blighted bear bursting from the bushes and attacking the party or as subdued as strange lights being spotted at the bog's edge. Similarly, you can setup a tracker with a token. When the token moves from the first position to the sixth position, the badness happens. The point is, the players should be aware that something bad is coming, that it is getting closer, and that they cannot stop it.
2. Everyone is expendable - The players should know that their characters (and their belongings) won't last long. Take away their arms, their armor, and their lives (not necessarily in that order). Don't be arbitrary about it, but don't be especially forgiving either. Your system should support this sort of character churn.
3. Get them invested in the world - Give them friends, or at least contacts, that they can rely on. When bad things happen, they're the first to be affected. It might just be a mob burning down their favorite inn to get at a fugitive hiding out in the basement or it might be a lynching of their favorite bard who always had rumors to share.
4. Evil is easy, good is hard - Reward the players for being wicked, punish them for being good. That traveler they helped on the road? He was a murderer and has just killed their friend, the barmaid. The orphanage that they destroyed to banish the warped soul of Icarus? It was hiding a cool, magical sword.
5. A cost - The players should always be allowed cool moments and chances to shine, but in a darker setting, they should be tempered with cost. Jack Sparrow resurrected the Black Pearl from Davy Jones' locker, which was only put there because he refused to transport 100 slaves. Now, he has to send 100 more to Davy Jones. I'd say that performing the mundane should generally be safe from cost, but give everyone access to some kind of power that they can tap into or tempt them with deals from demons, djinn, and forest monsters that will eventually be turned back on them.
6. A sense of powerlessness - You should still let the players win when they're clever, they've paid the price, or when they toughed it out. But, they should always have the feeling that victory is only a pause in despair. They've saved the village from the werewolf and exposed his flesh-eating family, but just as they're celebrating, the Witch of the West rides into town, condemning all who pass under her gaze to being turned to stone.
7. Connect the characters - Give the characters reasons to be together like serving in war together, being related, working a job together before, one saved another. Make some bad connections, too - one has a dark secret and another knows what it is, one betrayed another, etc.
8. Give the characters desires - Encourage the players to come up with desires for their characters. Make some of them competing objectives if you can.

Don't use DnD - it's the antithesis of all of these things (not that DnD is necessarily bad, but it's clearly going for a more heroic vision). I like Powered by the Apocalypse games, but I'm sure you could also use FATE, GURPS, or some other system to support the above. Make sure that your players buy in to these things first - there's nothing worse than a player thinking she's going to play a paladin who saves the prince with a three page backstory who dies two sessions in and doesn't do anything heroic.

[Yora]

I always find personal connections difficult in RPGs, but then I mostly ran nomadic treasure hunters campaigns. I think probably the best way to get the players invested in NPCs it to make it really useful to repeatedly go for them for assistance. "Let's go see the old man at the fish market" as a first response to a question might seem a bit easy at first and not really like the players putting much effort into finding the answer themselves, but if you give them at least something useful return most of the times, it makes that NPC matter to them and it also leads to the game progressing swiftly instead of the players feeling stuck.

Deals with dangerous spirits is a great idea. Like I said, I like intrigue stories where the heroes realize they are getting exploited and spirits can play that game just as well as influential mortals. As with the previous point, it can very well be allowed to be an easy and reliable way to make progress for the players. It can send them on side quests, put them into debt, and again boosts personal interaction with the inhabitants of the setting. If it makes them go to places they would not want to go and worry about something comming back to bite them at really bad moments, that's a huge plus for such a campaign. Making spirits relatively easy to find and eager to make deals seems like a great and fun idea.
It's also another one of those things where I think it will work much better without any associated mechanics and die rolls. If the players know that the outcome of a deal depends on a dice roll they will look at their modifiers, and if visible dice rolls, and make assumptions that they succeeded or failed. But if a treacherous spirit simply says yes and gives them what they asked for, it will always be with a huge amount of doubt that they just made a really bad choice.

[Mutazoia]

Might I suggest taking a look at the Midnight campaign setting. In a nutshell, it's a "what if Sauron had reclaimed the One Ring" setting. The world has it's pants around it's knees, and is grabbing it's ankles, and the PC's are basically just fighting to reduce the size of the incoming pineapple by a few centimeters.

[Guizonde]

Might I suggest taking a look at the Midnight campaign setting. In a nutshell, it's a "what if Sauron had reclaimed the One Ring" setting. The world has it's pants around it's knees, and is grabbing it's ankles, and the PC's are basically just fighting to reduce the size of the incoming pineapple by a few centimeters.

i loll'd. also, is fatal involved in this? because those charts are disturbingly extensive.

[Yora]

This discussion had me remember a series of four posts at Against the Wicked City (#1, #2, #3, #4) about how Joseph draws for his campaign from works that are sometimes collectively refered to as Romantic Fantasy. Don't be fooled by the (really poorly chosen) term, his Wicked City is hands down the most nightmarish place I've ever seen in RPGs. If Midnight is "what if Sauron had won", then the Wicked City seems to be "what if Sigil were to turn into Silent Hill". Or perhaps, "what if Bloodborne were set in Asia".

And reading through it again, it very much sounds like a pretty spot on description for The Witcher as well. If you want to take a Dark Fantasy campaign into that direction (which I totally do), it's a very good read.

[Yora]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

[Piedmon_Sama]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

Something like Full Metal Alchemist, maybe? There's nothing inherently "evil" about alchemy, but people being people it gets used for a lot of very messed up stuff in that setting. Cities of people sacrificed essentially to create a single orb of power; peoples' bodies (and souls) twisted in nightmarish ways, other perversions against the natural order. You might think Alchemy was some kind of black magic but in reality it's just a tool often used by the desperate, or people possessed by some kind of ideology or obsession.

I think that's what I'd emphasize. Magic may offer various kinds of power but the buy-in has to be steep enough (like, decades of toil and study) only the very determined (to the point of mania) ever become accomplished at it.

e: Like, let's say in your campaign one of your players wants to play a Magic-User. The next thing you say should be "why did they want to become one?" because the idea should be, being a wizard (or w/e) is too difficult for anyone to do it just because they liked the look, or they're lazy and wanted a spell that finds their keys. You don't get there without having some kind of driver like "I want to return someone I lost to life," "I want to change the world in a big way," "I want to become something more than human," etc. Magic users are people with this big driving ambition they'll do almost anything for---almost inevitably as the cost rises, it begins to hurt those around them...

[Frozen_Feet]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

Let's discuss this in the context of a simple system of magic I put together, based on common rules shared by real and fictional systems:

Related, let me renumerate the four laws of magic which I feel will 1) lead to comprehensible magic system with clear limits and 2) feel magical to players in the real world.

1st rule: rule of symbolism: a thing which appears similar to a thing, can be used to affect that thing, AKA manipulation of symbols manipulates reality.

2nd rule: law of contagion: things which have been in contact, remain connected. You can use part of a whole to affect the whole.

3rd rule: mind over matter. Thoughts and emotions have direct impact on reality. Corollary to this is that a mage must be thinking of the effect they desire and fully intend it for magic to work. Rule of thumb: "there are no accidents in magic".

4th rule: no ontological inertia. Effects of magic only remain as long as the caster is focusing their thoughts and emotions, or, if the target is another conscious being, as long as the target can focus their thoughts and emotions.

Spoiler:
Let me also give you a few example spells which adhere to these rules:

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Example spell A: the Voodoo doll.

First, you acquire a symbol of the target person: a doll in their likeness. Second, you create a connection to that person, by acquiring a piece of their body: a strand of hair, a drop of blood, a toenail etc. Third, you must harm the doll with the intent of harming the real person. If your intentions are true, the person will now suffer pain. After this, two things can happen. If the target is unaware of the curse, the pain will cease once your attention on the doll ceases. If you get the target to believe they are cursed, then their own belief will keep the curse going even when your attention is elsewhere.

Things which can go wrong with the spell:

- your symbol is lackluster; it does not bear resemblance to the right person
- you lack real connection to the target person; the hair, the blood, the nail, is from someone else
- you lack real intent to harm. Again: "there are no accidents in magic". If you don't truly wish to stab a person with a needle, it does not matter how many needles you stab in your doll.
- the target refuses to believe they are cursed. You can still affect them when your full attention is on the doll, but you cannot make the curse "stick" to cause a lasting change in the target's life.

How to break the spell:

- destroy the doll without intending harm to the person the doll is made of. This destroys the symbolic connection between the doll and the target. To be on the safe side, it helps if you at the same time proclaim and honestly believe the doll has no connection to the person it is made of. If you feel at any level that harming the doll equates to harming the person, this is obviously very dangerous. You might want to get a complete stranger to do this. It's easier to think a doll's just a doll if you don't know it's off a real person.
- remove the body part from the doll. This breaks the connection between the target and the doll.
- make the spellcaster feel pity towards the target. They cannot cause them harm if they do not honestly wish that. It also helps if the target believes the spellcaster does not honestly wish them harm.
- convince the target that they aren't, and can't, be cursed. This makes it impossible to make a curse "stick", and provides resistance to the spellcaster's tricks.
- if the target's own belief is upholding the curse, give them the doll so they can themselves remove the pins and destroy the doll, hence verifying the curse is over.
- kill the spellcaster, preferably in sight of the target.
- if the target's own belief is fueling the curse, make them suffer amnesia.

Example spell B: shapeshifting

First, you make yourself into a symbol of the thing you wish to change into. Second, you place upon yourself or consume ("you are what you eat") a piece of the thing you wish to turn into. For example, for turning into a wolf, dressing in a wolf pelt serves both purposes. Now, while honestly wanting to be the thing you wish to change into, act like that thing. You change back once you honestly wish to be human again and cease to act like the thing you changed into.

Things which can go wrong with this spell:

- your symbol is lackluster; neither you nor your actions bear resemblance to the thing you wanted to change into.
- the thing you consumed or placed upon yourself is of the wrong creature, so you don't have a connection to it. Do n't use a bear pelt if trying to turn into a wolf.
- you don't actually know what the thing is really like, so you can't honestly intent to become it either. If you know nothing of how real wolves act, you can't change into one either.
- the thing you turned into does not or cannot have a comprehension of what it's like to be human; a human may know both what it's like to be human and what it's like to be a wolf, but a wolf might only know what it's like to be wolf. This makes it difficult to change back on purpose. (One of the few corner cases of a spell being "permanent". Pro tip: don't turn yourself into an inanimate object!)
- the thing you turned into would not want to turn into your past form. For example, dragons are arrogant creatures and see humans as inferior. Not in a million years would a dragon want to be a human, a dragon just wants to be dragon.

How to break the spell:

- kill or destroy who has been changed. This, at latest, ends the spell and restores the thing to its original form.
- convince the changed thing that they'd really be better off in some other form, hence breaking the intentionality upholding the spell. For example, if the spellcaster-turned-wolf is faced with reality of a human they loved now scorning or fearing them, they may wish to not be wolf again.
- countespell: disbelieve the transformation really hard, acting like its all smoke and mirrors, and convince all others to follow suit. Note: this is dangerous if even little doubt remains in your heart. It is hard to disbelieve a wolf when its biting your throat. Usually only works if you know the thing is really under a spell, such as through witnessing the initial transformation.

Let's first discuss God Kings again. Remember how their subjects are putting their symbols on every damn thing? That's an attempt, by them, to invoke the first rule. Their faith in their Kings' ability to protect them is invoking the third rule.

The presense of a King's symbol, is the same as a King's presence. As long as the people believe a King will keep them from harm, they will.

But what if this belief ever falters? That is when the fourth rule comes into play and the realm of a King collapses. "Without faith, the Cross is only iron." If people lose their faith in their King, the symbols cease to have power, and all the spirits they are holding back will pour in.

Or what if people forget what the symbols stand for? Same thing. Hence, the symbol must be reinforced, its meaning must be made clear to all, burned into the minds of people with force if no other method suffices.

Now, one law is still unaddressed: the second one. What is the connection between the symbol, the people and their King? It could be as simple as a King regularly touring through their realm to touch these symbols. It could be some symbols, those with real power, come directly from the King and have their literal blood and sweat poured into their making. Of course, this would also be dangerous, as such connection could be used against them. Or, it could be the people and their King are related, and the symbols only work in the hands of those who have Royal blood flowing in their veins.

There are many potentially sinister implication of this. First, all those areas where a King's influence is vaning and spirits are moving in? Every haunted house, every dark grove where bad things happen? It's because one of the four rules is being broken. Maybe people are losing faith. Maybe the King, itself, is losing faith or ignoring their realm. Maybe the King's symbols are being annihilated, or worse, the meaning behind them is being annihilated, causing people to forget what they stand for and hence causing them to lose their effect. Maybe the connection between the King and their subjects has been broken, causing the wards to fail despite all other steps being followed. A haunted house could happen, because a noble's son was illegitimate, and did not have Royal blood in them. Or because the symbols sold to them were frauds, not made nor blessed by the King.

Of course, a working symbol of a King can be just as horrifying. Again, a symbol's presence implies the King's presence. Do you want your King to know what you're up to? Your hidden thoughts and dirtiest secrets? If not, you will have to forego having their symbols around... possibly making you vulnerable to spirits of the dark.

[Guizonde]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

oh, i've no problem with flak-canon wizards in dark fantasy. it's just that the more ammo you throw at your victims, the bigger the risk of a shell going off in the tube....

frankly, the weaker the magic, the less harsh effects it should have. for example, a firestorm spell going wrong should feel like a fair amount of tnt going off inside your waistband (and spraying said contents of waistband across a football field). a sleep spell getting sizzled? you'll feel drowsy for an hour, if that? i like my telekinesis a lot (and has helped my caster teammates innumerable times), and that is consecrated bread to a dm with a sense of humor. once, a small tk misfire resulted in the caster getting his nose pinched for 40 minutes. the player spoke as if his nose was stuffed and took a hefty hit to most social interactions. levitating a mook would probably mean hovering in place due to wedgie-power. basically, give the wizard all the gamebreaking potential of dnd, add a bit more just in case, and make the risk/reward a straight up 50/50 chance. sure, you could disintegrate the castle, but are you willing to pay the price? you can totally charm the pants off the bouncer guarding the tavern, but do you really want to fall in unrequited love with him if it fails?

or, you can always make sure that magic leaves stigmata. my personal favorite? odd eyes. slit-pupils, mismatched eyes, cloudy eyes... the more you use, the more the effects manifest on you.

[Yora]

In Symbaroum, characters get temporary corruption points for casting spells and permanent corruption points for learning spells. If you belong to one of the four established traditions, then you have the ability to supress the corruption caused by spells associated with the tradition. Any time your total corruption exceeds half your maximum, you gain 1-4 permanent corruption and show visible signs of the corruption. Casting a spell outside of your tradition caused 1-4 temporary corruption and your maximum is probably something like 12. If you reach the maximum, the character turns into a monster, permanently.
That really gives you not a lot of room to spam spells outside your mastered traditions in combat, or playing an independent mage. You probably already have a permanent corruption of 2 or 3 from knowing some spells, and with bad rolls you first go to 7 temporary and then to 7 permanent/11 temporary and you're almost done for. Maybe I got it wrong (just started reading), but that sounds like a considerable price to pay for magic. (Of course, if you master a tradition you can use that one without any real risk.)

When it comes to magic having a price, I think backfires are rather weak or too dangerous. The nice thing about a corruption system like this is that you know in advance that you will have to pay and how much you will have to pay. With a backfire chance, you only have to pay if it goes wrong. And if the price is too high in case of a mishap, then using it at all might be too dangerous. Managing your corruption level feels much more interesting to me, because it's only slightly bad, but all the time.

I think the idea of magic is evil and turns you into an insane undead monstrosity is somewhat overdone, though. An interesting reskinning would be that magic makes you lose your humanity and assume traits of the fey. Mages simply become weird over time if they are not careful, and eventually they get consumed by their magic and disappear into the otherworld to continue existence as something else. Equally as problematic for players, but it makes magic more weird than evil.

[War_lord]

You don't necessarily have to have magic that always ends up killing or driving the user insane though, that runs the risk of making playing a mage unappetizing to your players. Rather, magic is relatively safe when used within a certain framework, but there's a great temptation to power through abuse, shortcuts and meddling with dark power and that's what brings the downfall.

[RazorChain]

In a game I played the magic user had a boundary, he could go safe and cast decent spells or he could overclock it and channel as much he could to get bigger results. The more power the magic user channeled the more risk of things going wrong. If the magic user was out of mana he could still try to cast spells just by burning his hit points, essentially using his life force to fuel the magic.


It is quite suprising how often people get tempted to reach for extra power even when they're risking disaster.

[Arbane]

e: Like, let's say in your campaign one of your players wants to play a Magic-User. The next thing you say should be "why did they want to become one?" because the idea should be, being a wizard (or w/e) is too difficult for anyone to do it just because they liked the look, or they're lazy and wanted a spell that finds their keys. You don't get there without having some kind of driver like "I want to return someone I lost to life," "I want to change the world in a big way," "I want to become something more than human," etc. Magic users are people with this big driving ambition they'll do almost anything for---almost inevitably as the cost rises, it begins to hurt those around them...

If you go with something like this, check out Unknown Armies, it's a modern-day urban fantasy game, but the useful part for this is that it's built into the system that magicians HAVE to be dangerously obsessed power-addicts who'd stab their own mother if they thought it would get them a big enough hit of magic. (It also has a really good system for modeling sanity and the loss thereof, which might also be useful.)

[Mutazoia]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

I rather like the way magic works in Glen Cook's Black Company novels. Learning a mage's true name, and speaking it to them, strips them of their power, making their name the most guarded secret they have. They don't really have set spell lists...they build spells for the occasion on the spot rather than casting spell number 237B, and it can take centuries for a mage to get really, really powerful. Green Ronin did a D20 setting for the Black Company, and then later a splat for just the magic system called True Sorcery.

[Anonymouswizard]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

I believe there's a general consensus that mages shouldn't be straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies. But beyond that? Many people like magic to be somewhat insidious in nature, but how could this look in practice?

I'm going to split this into two seperate issues, effects and access/cost.

First off, what effects should a dark fantasy mage be able to use? Well nothings actually out of bounds, but you're unlikely to find massive storms of fire (that's more high fantasy). I'd go for more invisible and mental effects, magicians are more John Constantine than Doctor Strange. Illusions, mind control, potentially even up to disintegration, but most magicians are bending minds instead of unmaking objects.

For access/cost, magic should not be easy. It should require something, in the setting I'm currently designing everybody able to cast magic made a deal with a demon in order to know how to do so (still working out if I want to keep Clerics or not, if so the angels they deal with are just as amoral but much more orderly), the cost to this deal might be a 'mark' (an altered or missing body part, red hands is a classic) or a service rendered (which may or may not have been given when the campaign begins). There are other options, spells requiring sacrifices or causing corruption as they're used, but the basic idea is that magic should have a cost to get or use that most people don't want.

[Lacco]

For the magic system (and also other things) I would suggest you check the Blade of the Iron Thrones. Overview of the magic system features:

Spoiler: Magic

Show

• Pool-based casting where sorcery pool consists of a derived attribute "Power" (that takes into account the attribute equivalents of Wisdom/Knowledge, Willpower and Body) and proficiency in given type of magic.
• Magic is divided into lesser mysteries (Cursing, Prophecy, Scrying, Enslavement - illusions/mind control, Witchfire - "artillery", Mending - "healing" but also causing pain), greater mysteries (summoning of demons and summoning of spirits) and arcane secrets (stuff like snuffing out sun, causing plagues, animating the dead).
• Every time you cast, you have to divide the pool between casting and containment check. One gives power to the spell, the other prevents the eldritch energies to affect you.
• Fail the containment check and the effect is uncontained (and will complicate your life a bit or wound you) and you also gain taint. Taint lowers your ability to do magic (decreases your sorcery pool) and gives you the nice "tainted" aura which makes pleasant conversations hard. Acquire too much taint at once and it discharges itself - giving you a wound or temporary deformity (but the backlash will remove some taint).
• Taint goes away slowly and accumulates easily if you get too careless.
• For 1-on-1 sorcerer battles there is Duel of Wills - in which the two mages use their pure power against each other, trying to grind the other down with series of maneuvers.
• If a sorcerer dies, he gets one last spell (if there is sufficient time) which is called "Dying Curse". At that point the sorcerer does not usually care about consequences and as such usually uses full dice pool for the casting...

As RazorChain stated, the temptation is there. And it's interesting to see it in work.

[Lazymancer]

A specific question to all of you: What are your thoughts on approaching magic in a Dark Fantasy context?

Initially, I thought you meant Low Magic/Dark Fantasy combination (people usually don't separate those - hence recommendation on replacing magic options with mundane; LM is inherently more social), but that seems to be not the case.

If the question is about pure DF (understood as dystopian fantasy), then mages as "straightforward magical artillery raining fire and lightning upon hordes of enemies" are certainly possible within it. You don't even need the "price" system or anything else. In fact, even regular D&D can be left practically as is.

For example, there was some adaptation of the XP system (World of Prime, IIRC), where XP was a tangible resource that could be extracted from the dead. I.e. class levels are literally powered by the souls. Consequently, classed nobility levels up with souls of the peasantry (animals don't give enough XP to be relevant; dozen lions ~ 1 commoner).

Take this system to its logical conclusion (if you don't partake in genocide you are outcompeted and overrun by neighbours) and Sauron becomes redundant.

I rather like the way magic works in Glen Cook's Black Company novels. Learning a mage's true name, and speaking it to them, strips them of their power, making their name the most guarded secret they have. They don't really have set spell lists...they build spells for the occasion on the spot rather than casting spell number 237B, and it can take centuries for a mage to get really, really powerful. Green Ronin did a D20 setting for the Black Company, and then later a splat for just the magic system called True Sorcery.

A further (less clunky) development is Spheres of Power.

[Yora]

First off, what effects should a dark fantasy mage be able to use? Well nothings actually out of bounds, but you're unlikely to find massive storms of fire (that's more high fantasy). I'd go for more invisible and mental effects, magicians are more John Constantine than Doctor Strange. Illusions, mind control, potentially even up to disintegration, but most magicians are bending minds instead of unmaking objects.

Seeing it put like this, I think that maybe the dominant forms of magic, that have a dark feel, are spells that take place inside the target. Be it mind control or harmfully altering the body of another person, or divination and shapeshifting on the side of the mage. Summoning of spirits and demons also blends in very nicely, but other than that, magic seems to be dominated by spells that take place inside of people. It's less visible, and at the same time more uncomfortable.

[Thinker]

Seeing it put like this, I think that maybe the dominant forms of magic, that have a dark feel, are spells that take place inside the target. Be it mind control or harmfully altering the body of another person, or divination and shapeshifting on the side of the mage. Summoning of spirits and demons also blends in very nicely, but other than that, magic seems to be dominated by spells that take place inside of people. It's less visible, and at the same time more uncomfortable.

That makes sense. Dark Fantasy is a stone's throw away from horror. Horror is about mystery, suspense, and powerlessness. I would include any magic that adds to those feelings.

[Thrudd]

Seeing it put like this, I think that maybe the dominant forms of magic, that have a dark feel, are spells that take place inside the target. Be it mind control or harmfully altering the body of another person, or divination and shapeshifting on the side of the mage. Summoning of spirits and demons also blends in very nicely, but other than that, magic seems to be dominated by spells that take place inside of people. It's less visible, and at the same time more uncomfortable.

Dungeon Crawl Classics has some great rules for dark and scary magic- magic users and clerics alike have some awesomely dark magic patrons, magic can go wrong, there are random quirks, and can end up cursing or mutating the caster, etc. It may be too close to D&D, but it is awesome for a "dark" themed setting imo.

[Anonymouswizard]

Seeing it put like this, I think that maybe the dominant forms of magic, that have a dark feel, are spells that take place inside the target. Be it mind control or harmfully altering the body of another person, or divination and shapeshifting on the side of the mage. Summoning of spirits and demons also blends in very nicely, but other than that, magic seems to be dominated by spells that take place inside of people. It's less visible, and at the same time more uncomfortable.

My thoughts exactly.

That's not to say that those are the only spells that work, but it can take more work to feel dark. Buffs are relatively easy, give them noticeable physical effects beyond bulging muscles and creepy goes up.

Completely agreeing on summon spells being in, I'd actually make it easier to summon high level demons than normal. Much, much easier to make a deal with the devil there. This doesn't have to go to the level of Lamentations of the Flame Princess where the rules as written allow a 1st level character to learn and cast Summon Cthulhu (which I'm certain is unintentional), but there should at least be particular ways to summon specific mid tier nasties. Also curses, even fairytale ones can be nasty, but if you can pull of the 'dark prophecy' variety ('you shall die alone and unloved') so much the better.

[Lazymancer]

where the rules as written allow a 1st level character to learn and cast Summon Cthulhu (which I'm certain is unintentional),

What makes you think it is unintentional? Quite a lot of LotFP modules incorporate similar world-changing events.

[Anonymouswizard]

What makes you think it is unintentional? Quite a lot of LotFP modules incorporate similar world-changing events.

Eh, forgot that you can apparently use sacrifices and thaumaturgic circles to summon cthulhu with the normal Simon spell, my bad.